The day was November 17, 1973, and President Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon said, "I am not a crook!" A crook? Why would anyone think he was a crook? Because the beleaguered 37th Commander in Chief of the United States was embroiled in the fallout from the notorious Watergate scandal that was like an albatross around the administration's neck, and Nixon was trying to save what was left of his substantially tarnished reputation. The deliciously clumsy controversy has been addressed numerous times by the entertainment industry — most notably by the 1976 film All the President's Men, starring young actors Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the roles of Carl Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as the two Washington Post reporters who uncovered the conspiracy. HBO is getting in on the scandal that rocked the country with its new five-episode drama miniseries called White House Plumbers.
We can expect a somewhat light-hearted and humorous take on the machinations and the true story behind the eventual botched burglary attempt in 1972 by a collection of misfit low-level functionaries that were tabbed by some of the top officials in the White House (allegedly) to do the bidding of President Richard Milhous Nixon and his top aides. Woody Harrelson, Justin Theroux, Lena Headey, Toby Huss, and Domnhall Gleason are all part of the highly anticipated satirical release.
What Was the Watergate Scandal?
On Friday, June 16, 1972, a group of five men hired by E. Howard Hunt (Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Theroux) broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). It was part of a plan to collect intelligence on the Democratic strategy behind the campaign to unseat the incumbent Republican politician later that year. The plan put forth by Liddy was for the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP) to hire five men to burglarize the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Office Building and collect wherever information they could to be delivered to top White House officials so that Nixon and his staff could be better equipped to plan for his bid for a second term in the Oval Office. Particularly information on individuals who were trying to make the notoriously paranoid President Nixon look bad. Needless to say, things went way off the rails and the result was arguably the biggest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics.
The Major Players Involved in the Watergate Scandal
Aside from the alleged knowledge of President Nixon, it was two of his top staffers that ended up taking the brunt of the blame for the Watergate break-in. Notably E. Howard Hunt, who was a former CIA operations officer and accomplished novelist, stepped up to organize the break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in June 1972 on behalf of the Nixon White House. The key pieces of evidence against the former operative were found in an address book of one of the five plumbers that included Hunt's phone number as well as the number of Bob Woodward, one of the two reporters that broke the story. Having those two bits of information tying Hunt to the crime was more than enough to prove his involvement.
A Second Pivotal Watergate Player
The man who came up with the plan to break in to the Watergate Office Building was a G. Gordon Liddy. He served in the United States Army before graduating from Fordham University before taking a job at the FBI. After a stint at the U.S. Treasury Department, he joined Nixon's staff as his an adviser and was also general counsel on the Committee to Reelect the President. Some of his crack counseling included the not so bright idea of collecting five amateur thieves to bust into the DNC Headquarters to steal documents and wiretap offices and phone lines. After his release from prison, Liddy famously was quoted as saying, "I'd do it again for my president."
All the President's Men and Their Crimes
G. Gordon Liddy was convicted in 1973 and sentenced to 20 years in jail for conspiracy, burglary and illegally wiretapping the Democratic Party's headquarters at the Watergate office complex. Howard Hunt was also jailed. The ripple effect of Nixon and his administrations crimes were felt throughout the nation's capital. In all, 40 government officials were jailed because of their involvement in Watergate related activities. Other than Hunt and Liddy, some of the most recognizable casualties included White House staffers H. R. Haldeman and John Erlichman, who were both imprisoned after their resignations on April 30, 1973. The damage went even further down the chain of command when White House legal counsel John Dean also resigned and was later sent to prison along with John Mitchell, the Attorney General and Chairman of CREEP (Committee to Reelect the President), and Charles Colson, who served as Nixon's special counsel.
The Legacy of Watergate in Pop Culture
Watergate was a political and social game-changer in ways that are still very relevant today. Whenever something bad, scandalous, or controversial happens, we attach the word, "gate" to the end of whatever it is. Even things that have nothing to do with politics have become well known by adding "gate" to the keyword including Will Smith's confounding slap of Chris Rock at the Oscars that is now referred to as "Slapgate." Or even more recently when Harry Styles appeared to have spit upon co-star Chris Pine during the promotion of the film Don't Worry Darling (a notion that was later dispelled), it earned the moniker, "Spitgate." The terminology has even reached the parlance of professional sports when NFL team, the New Orleans Saints, were reportedly paying players to seek out and injure opponents on purpose from 2009-2011. They called it "Bountygate."
Because of the actions of Hunt, Liddy, and the other White House Plumbers, the word "gate" has taken on a life of its own and appears to be a permanent fixture in the English language and beyond in perpetuity.